Hi All --
Nice to find 33 posts about web proper names in my email this evening... (:-)
I'm wondering if some of the debate is happening in the wrong
framework. Sort of like the story of the drunk looking for his car keys
under the street light because that's where he can see -- not where he
dropped them, in the dark.
A someone pointed out at the recent SICoP meeting, one of the words with
the most flexible meaning that we use is, er, "meaning" .
So, if we try to resolve the meaning of URIs within the framework of RDF,
perhaps we are just looking in the wrong place.
So, what's needed? I'd argue that our discussions about web proper names
and URIs can never converge to something computationally useful, unless we
broaden the frame of discussion to bring in natural language
processing. In particular, a solid way of computationally linking RDF and
English, in both directions, would do the trick.
Unfortunately, full natural language processing is a deep (and fascinating)
ongoing research area in its own right, so something simpler is needed if
the "web proper names" debate is to converge in this decade.
However, there is a rather lightweight, pragmatic method of making the
computational RDF <--> English link. The latest arguments for this are at [1].
So, this is clearly from left field when put alongside the web proper names
posts so far. But does it help? I hope so...
Cheers, -- Adrian
[1]
http://colab.cim3.net/file/work/Expedition_Workshop/2004-09-14_iMfgWorkshop/Walker_20040914.PPT
or
http://www.reengineeringllc.com/Internet_Business_Logic_e-Government_Presentation.pdf
INTERNET BUSINESS LOGIC (R)
www.reengineeringllc.com
Dr. Adrian Walker
Reengineering LLC
PO Box 1412
Bristol
CT 06011-1412 USA
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